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QUIET REVOLUTION WIND TURBINE

Quiet Revolution Ltd has revolutionized the windmill with their new QuietRevolution wind turbine, the QR5. Not only is it one of the most visually appealing wind turbines available on the market, its small scale allows it to fit seamlessly into an urban environment, providing a renewable energy resource in places where space constraints previously made it impossible to hook up green power systems.

The genius of the QuietRevolution’s QR5 is its VAWT design, aka Vertical Axis Wind Turbine. The VAWT enables the QR5 to gather power from the winds near around buildings that are constantly changing directions. It is also quieter than your typical wind turbine because the tip speed is slower, due to the triple-helix design, which in turn allows it to be situated closer to buildings and on towers.

Exactly how big is the QuietRevolution Turbine you ask? Currently in production, the QR5 is 5m high and 3.1m in diameter. Two more sizes are currently being developed, the OR2.5 (2.5m x 2.5m) and the QR12 (12m x 6m). The QR5 is currently priced at £25,000, which includes the purchase of the wind turbine, integrated control electronics, peak power tracking, auto shutdown and generator. Depending on placement and wind speeds, the QR5 will pay for itself within 15 years or less.

The creative thinkers at QuietRevolution have taken the wind turbine one step further with their QuietRevolution Display. Through the use of LEDS and a unique firing sequence coordinated with the spinning of the blades, a full color video image can be displayed as if it is hanging in the middle of space.

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44 Comments

CarlossusDecember 17, 2009 at 8:36 am

There are already two of these in action outside Sainsbury Supermaket in Greenwich (UK), no danger to birds what so-ever, if you saw them you would realise that. No idea how much power they make though, but they look far prettier than the ones they replaced (conventional 3 blade types)

Gawde R PNovember 4, 2009 at 1:09 am

looks good.feasibility need to be checked

eslamFebruary 10, 2009 at 8:19 pm

hi i am a student in the faculty of engineering and i am interested on wind turbine do you know any information about an aerodynamic model for quiet revolution if you do could you please informe me at this e-mail eslam_hosny_242@hotmail.com

Glen BoltonJune 24, 2008 at 12:52 pm

Hello,
I am a retired Aero engineer with a great interest in wind power and the possibilities of Vertical axis turbines. However, my experience has been that they cant really compete with the present propeller turbines for the
large mega watt energy grids, for two basic reasons. The swept area of VAWTs is much less than the prop
jobs, plus when mounted at ground level, the important matter of wind speed is much lower, and fairly prone
to turbulence. I have tried to design an efficient VAWT but have failed to find an aerodynamic breakthrough
that works.
I cant believe the giant maglev turbine supposedly being built in China is for real ! Even if it only claimed to
be as efficient as one HAWT, it would be hard to believe. Maybe they have discovered a major breakthrough
in physics and aerodynamics that I\\\’m not aware of. Mag lev is nice as a bearing, but it doesnt repel the laws of
aerodynamics. Please advise me if this monster is really being built ! Thanks, Glen Bolton

mathewgApril 22, 2008 at 11:53 pm

Any one has an idea how if this could be done on a large scale, say for a township… A hybrid of wind and solar… any sites for further info ?

regards

Mat
India

H. EberleFebruary 11, 2008 at 9:51 am

Your wind power device looks to be just what we would want, only a smaller version, and less costly. Please consider making versions that could be used on farms and residences in rural areas.

a 5kw wind generator can produce 13087kwh electricity annually, suppose your country electricity is $0.15/kwh, so electricity amount is $1963.05, our wind generator life is 20 years at least, so it can bring value $39270. How cost-efficient!!! Meanwhile, it takes good advantage of wind energy—–free resource, protect environment.

[…] Wind turbines” before, but the ‘WING’ design is nothing like the large, static “Quiet Revolution” for the home, nor the tiny, plastic Motorwind Micro Turbine for use in dense urban areas. ‘Wing’ is […]

Gary JohnsonAugust 23, 2007 at 5:05 pm

We are a team of architects and engineers putting together ideas for a riverfront redevelopment. As part of our marketing package, we are including sketches of people gathering places. One of our ideas to create a sort of interpretive center of alternative energy. As such, we would like to show wind turbines, solar collectors, etc. We like the aesthetic of your helix shaped product and would like to include a picture or two of it in our proposal. Is it OK to copy and paste the images above into our promotional literature?

hello above friend, I think for industrial purpose, large power output, ours is smaller, Our hummer wind generator from 350w to 10kw can load colour TV, refrigerator, water pumping, washing machine, street lamp, lake shipment, beacon, lighthouse. Consumer can be resident, culturist, sea user, ship user and etc.
You can load http://www.chinahummer.cn for a check, if you are interested, please send emai to hummer-612@hotmail.com.

s.aravindAugust 6, 2007 at 3:38 am

hi,
the wind turbine of EON model looks cool and futurestic one . Being in India were enery through wind turbines are used for Industrial purpose in a successful way and market for residential flats and homes are to be the next vast development in the country. I am very much interested on wind turbines workouts and energy output capasity details. Awaiting for your valuable mail.
regard,
s.aravind

I live in a tower (14th floor quarter) in front of majestic powai lake at Mumbai,India. There are plenty of wind all around the roof. The roof is clean and there is no cell tower there. Can we install some VAWT on this roof top ?.To get some electricity for the lift lights ? My company will sponsor the project. Please let me know if you can provide me the design.

Reagrds.

S. Bera
NTPC – Mumbai

Hans MoermanFebruary 22, 2007 at 7:14 am

Am I mistaken or does this windmill look a lot like the Turby? That has been tested since 2002. Do a Google on “Turby” and you’ll see what I mean.

Ken StocktonJanuary 20, 2007 at 11:09 am

As a creative artist I can see this means of power on mountain tops as works of art. By all means, why doesn’t the USA make the right steps now and apply this art to the areas with the most wind. We need to get our act into gear for our children’s future. Thank you for your time. Ken Stockton

I am exploring the idea of 1 or more turbines at a location in Pennsylvania, USA. Varying winds, and directions, with conditions greater than the surrounding area because of geologic features. Ideas welcomed, Thank you, Mike Ross

this is a best thing to produce a power.i want to know about how much power will genarate & how many cost for this model?

CJDecember 7, 2006 at 12:13 pm

Vertical-axis wind turbine

This type of wind turbine is not widely used today. It is employed in areas where wind speeds and directions are gusty and variable. There are two major categories:
1.
The Darrieus turbine works on the lifting principle. It has two or three vertical blades which rotate into and out of the wind flow. This type of wind turbine provides ease of maintenance as the operating gears and controls are located close to the ground. However, it needs an external source to initiate the spin, e.g. an electric motor or some other type of vertical-axis rotor.
2.
The Savonius turbine works on the resistance principle. The rotor turns relatively slowly, but yields a high torque. This type can be used for pumping water, but is not effective in the generation of electricity, as rpms above 1000 are generally best for producing electricity and this type usually turns below 100 rpm

I just thought that this would be some helpful info.
Personally i love the Darrieus design but i am holding judgement on its feasibility in urban areas.

Tuomo TruhponenDecember 1, 2006 at 12:10 pm

There is one Finnish company producing “wind turbins”. Their product have some similarities with this product.

[…] The post that drew my attention (via Engadget), was a beautiful design for a quiet wind turbine from a British company called Quiet Revolution. Smaller and quieter than a normal wind turbine, the only drawback is the pricetag of £25,000. It does does however pay for itself within 15 years. […]

BrendanNovember 20, 2006 at 11:14 pm

I know this is a rather long post, but here is the majority of an article The Economist magazine wrote last march about vertical Axis turbines. Has a lot of great information about their benefits.

TMA, a company based in Cheyenne, Wyoming, announced in November that its first vertical-axis wind turbine (VAWT) would soon be ready for commercial production. The TMA system has two sets of vertical blades. The two inner blades, each shaped like a half-cylinder, catch the wind and rotate about a central axis, while the three outer blades, shaped like aircraft wings, are fixed. The interaction between the two sets of blades causes a drop in pressure in front of the rotating blades’ leading edges, which further increases the rate of rotation. TMA claims that its system harvests 43-45% of the wind’s available energy; conventional propeller-style turbines, in contrast, have efficiencies of 25-40%.
In winds of more than 80kph (50mph), furthermore, the blades and gearboxes of conventional turbines cannot cope with the strain, and they have to be shut down. TMA says its vertical-axis design can still work even at wind speeds as high as 110kph, however. The ability to harvest high-speed winds is particularly valuable, since each doubling of wind speed results in an eightfold increase in available energy. TMA also claims that its design is quieter and less visually obtrusive than conventional turbines.
A British consortium, Eurowind Developments, which includes VT Group, a shipbuilding and engineering company, and Mott Macdonald, a consultancy, believes VAWTs could be the best design for giant offshore turbines. Such a turbine, with a capacity of ten megawatts, would be able to power around 10,000 homes. Today’s largest horizontal-axis turbines produce around five megawatts, and are proving difficult to scale up. Each blade has to be more than 60 metres long, and the bigger the blade, the greater the stress it experiences as it turns: the blade’s own weight compresses it at the top of the cycle and stretches it at the bottom. As a result, blades must be made and transported in one piece, which is expensive. Reinforcing the blade to enable it to withstand these forces further increases cost and reduces efficiency.
The blades of a VAWT, in contrast, do not have to undergo this repeated stretching and compression. Nor does their cross-section vary from top to bottom, which makes them cheaper to manufacture than windmill blades, the shape of which must be painstakingly engineered. VAWT blades can also be made in pieces and joined together on site. So vertical-axis designs should enable wind turbines to be scaled up more easily, resulting in cheaper electricity, even for VAWT designs of similar efficiency to conventional turbines. “If we can build a ten megawatt turbine for only slightly more than other companies build five megawatt turbines, then the efficiency question goes out of the window,” says Steven Peace of Eurowind.
Neither TMA nor Eurowind has yet proved the technology in commercial deployments, however, and the mainstream wind industry remains sceptical about the benefits of VAWTs, in large part because the idea is not new. Simple VAWTs, with a couple of sails pushed around by the wind, have been around for centuries, and were being used in Persia thousands of years ago. In 1922 a Finnish engineer, S. J. Savonius, improved on this primitive design, and devised a turbine based on two half-cylinder blades, as TMA uses. In 1931 a Frenchman, Georges Darrieus, patented a wind turbine that operates on an entirely different principle with two thin, curved blades fixed to a central axis, in a design often compared to an egg-beater.
Turbines based on the Savonius design are already used for small-scale generation in remote locations. Even large-scale VAWTs have been tried before. In the early 1990s the British government funded a trial in Carmarthen Bay in Wales, which culminated in the construction of a 500 kilowatt, 35-metre turbine. But it failed after six months because of a manufacturing fault, and the trial was wound up shortly afterwards. The project’s final report concluded that VAWTs had no applications on land, but they should be reconsidered “if offshore wind energy becomes more attractive”.
That day has now come, so it might be time to give the technology another look. Nigel Crowe, director of the British Wind Energy Association, says the use of horizontal-axis turbines has as much to do with historical factors as technological merit. “Why do we use horizontal axis turbines? Why do we use VHS, not Betamax?” he asks. “They are the ones that got accepted first, and got established in the marketplace. The industry now is going through some major changes. Maybe the goalposts have moved a bit and maybe it is the right time to look again.” With plans afoot to build wind farms off the coast of Britain and elsewhere, the fortunes of the VAWT may be about to take a turn for the better.

Great Idea, we have proposed the use of these on our Mumbai Contract as the developer is interested in sustainability which we a very pleased about. Please can we have some specs on how much current these units produce. Our contract is a Town Centre in Dadar central Mumbai that was largely industrial area.
Thank You,
Philip Gee

Dominic in montrealNovember 19, 2006 at 2:49 am

sorry i made a boo boo. it’s the darrieus (vertical axis) that operates in a wider wind speed range and is self starting.

i do remember however having seen some that tore themselves appart, those are the () shaped variety and i would suppose that when being overdriven it’s not just the g-forces from spinning that damage it but that a large unsupported span of a certain airfoil is being driven into reynolds numbers it can’t handle and will likely oscillate violently. In real english the wing is moving far too fast through the air and the air around it is changing so much that it starts fluttering incontrollably.

Dominic in montrealNovember 19, 2006 at 2:20 am

If i remember correctly the main problems with most turbines on a vertical axis are the narrow operating range of windspeeds and the difficult start up, some even have to be spun to get going. i’m going back to a highschool geography project for this so feel free to correct me. I can imagine this one would go a ways to ease of start up since there are acting surfaces 360 degrees around the axis. It should also put a dent into the operating speed problem because the foils are swept a fair it and that should both shed excess wind speed and stiffen the whole deal up a bit. And finally the combination of sweep and aggressive aspect ratio of the foils /should minimise the amount of disturbed air and thus drag and therefore noise.

not being a certified aerodynamicist you should find out for yourself, but this is what i’ve learned and the subsequent intuition tells me should be the case.

chetan parikhNovember 18, 2006 at 2:45 am

this is truly inspiring,innovative also.it sets example to believe that creativity has no dead end.

The vibration and hence noise level is low because both ends of the helical blades are attached to rings. For the normal horizontle axis turbines, noise is a real problem and makes them unsuitable for urban areas. There is a design where the horizontle axis turbine blades have a ring that the blade ends attach to and this is supposed to reduce the noise.

The chinese were the first to use vertical windmills many centuries ago. They did it with an ingenious idea – imagine a two panel turbine for ease of illustration. each panel is a bamboo mat (say a rectangle 4′ X 6′) and there is a slightly smaller frame BEHIND ONE mat (say 3.5′ x 5.5′) and another similar frame in FRONT of the OTHER mat. The frames are rigidly attached to the vertical shaft and the mats are free to flap with three sides free and the side along the vertical shaft acting as a hingle for the flapping. For a given wind direction the mat in front of the frame presses against the frame turning the shaft while the other mat flaps back from its frame to let air pass through. The wind force differential is what turns the windmill. I don’t know if I did a good job of explaining but it is a piece of trivia of ancient science for those who might be interested.

Christoper P.November 16, 2006 at 3:12 pm

Third Round (if I get yellow-carded for not “playing nice”):
I just remembered an article in my hometown paper from August, about a home-grown VWT (Vertical Wind Turbines). It does not have the elegant shape or artsiness of the QuietRevolution, but it appears a good deal more compact, and thereby less of a threat to the birds (even pidgeons and starlings!) and possibly more congenial to move-on modular housing (think Katrina/Rita rebuilds, remote locations, urban infill).http://www.pacwind.net/

Christoper P.November 16, 2006 at 2:45 pm

Round 2–
Re: D.B.’s and J.S. re “inherent problems” and “little redesigned” from a dalvanius turbine (akin to one of those spinning “park here” signs hazardous to unwary pedestrians). On face value alone, I’d say the difference in design is like the difference between a WWI biplane and a modern high-performance sailplane! The aerodynamic efficiency (and therefore, energy efficiency) is tremendously improved. Another plus: if the aerodynamic efficiency is improved, the noise reduction is probably significant as well. I don’t have the engineering chops to lay out the formulas and data curves, but I am enough of a designer to have my eyebrows raised and my interest piqued by this concept…

Christoper P.November 16, 2006 at 2:32 pm

To Alex:
The “Eon” concept is a VIRTUAL sign, an optical illusion created by timed LED lights on the blades, much like the art-pieces created by strip-lasers that depend on the brain’s ability to freeze-frame motion in order to make sense of what it sees.
As for the slice and dice issue, the lighting combiined with the verticality of the system moving within a compact cylindrical space (as contrasted with a large vertical disk with swinging arms) may be more compatible with bird perceptions of obstacles (more tree-like?) and be less hazardous. That, combined with the ability to put them in close proximity to buildings, may also reduce the need to plant the wind farms out into more open migratory flyways. The hazard shifts to pidgeons and starlings, more akin to rats and cockroaches in urban areas. However, I am NOT advocating planting these in Piazza San Marco or Trafalgar! (Maybe on the National Mall in Washington, up by the Commerce Department…)

I would like to know how much power the unit will generate at what wind speed, and air density.

AlexNovember 15, 2006 at 4:12 pm

Will it be able to slice and dice birds like the old fashion wind turbines?
The photo with the turbine that has the “eon” logo around it in an orange colour looks almost as if it’s some sort of mesh cover that could prevent birds from flying straight into them. I wonder how feasible such a mesh is?
It looks pretty cool.